Destiny, a video game about crushing the hopes and dreams of Peter Dinklage, is changing in just about every possible way when the next expansion launches this September. Even Nightfall strikes are getting a total overhaul.
When The Taken King comes out on September 15, dying in a Nightfall will no longer kick your party back to orbit. Those weekly Nightfall experience boosts are going away, too. Instead, it sounds like Nightfalls will be more like level 40 weekly heroic strikes.
Writes Luke Smith on the Bungie blog:
Our desired Nightfall experience is the weekly ritual where you get together with your friends for a test of thumbskill and allow players to optimise for gear.
Burn skulls motivate weapon rotation and now the Burn resist talents found on chest pieces will rotate armour.
The death penalty of being kicked to orbit often leads to players feeling forced to play too safe, rather than running through the world as a monster killing machine.
Another thing we didn’t like about the Year 1 Nightfall was how players could feel forced to play Nightfall as early as possible in the week to maximise the benefit from the Nightfall buff. So, we’ve shelved that buff until we can reform it into something closer to its original intent – a mark of prestige for having achieved something challenging. We’ve adjusted sources of XP and Reputation up to account for its absence.
- Now requires Level 40
Wiping no longer returns Fireteams to Orbit
Now uses 30 second time-out penalty for Death (same as Raid Normal)
Crazy. Since Nightfalls will basically be weekly heroics now, Smith also says they’re replacing those strikes with something called the Weekly Heroic Playlist. Read up:
We’ve removed a dedicated Weekly Heroic Strike from the game this Fall. In its place we’ve added a new playlist: the Vanguard Heroic Playlist.
Each week players receive bonus Legendary Marks from the Weekly Heroic Playlist. These awards are received at the Account level rather than the character level – as was the case with Year One Weekly Heroic Rewards.
We made this change to enable players to focus on a single character more, or feel less pressure to gear three characters at once for Legendary Marks.
- Requires Level 40
Removed the Weekly Heroic Strikes
Instead, accounts receive Legendary Marks for completing the first three Weekly Strikes
Removed the Weekly Cap on how many Legendary Marks can be earned.
Guarantee a Legendary Engram drop from a character’s first clear of a Weekly Heroic Strike
Safe to say I can’t wait for this damn “expansion pack.”
Comments
18 responses to “Destiny Nightfalls Are Getting A Total Overhaul”
All sensible, cool changes. Nightfall was always an exercise in cowardice rather than fun.
Don’t disagree with the changes, but neither do I think that they were needed.
I dunno, am paranoid they are changing too much at once, they are just setting themselves up to screw a lot of things up
Like every other DLC…
At this point they can do what ever the hell the want to with the game as there is no way in hell im paying $80 for glorified dlc.
groan, well dont then, no one is forcing you to do it. I have got something like 450 hours of entertainment from $120 original game/season pass. At least maybe 70 (so far) of them were from the $30 worth of expansion passes. thats like 10x more playable time for a third of the cost a Call of Duty game offers. and this expansion pack has way more than those did.
Err ok. That’s your opinion. I have my own as well – imo its a complete ripoff. Why is my opinion less valid than yours? Here’s a hint its not. There are a myriad of games out there competeing for my dollar which IMO represent much better value.
i am still trying to work out how you think its nothing more than a glorified DLC? I mean they have been more than up the front about everything that is included in the price. So its not like they are doing a Arkham Knight where were charging almost the price of the full game for mostly unlisted potential DLC and saying “trust us” it will be worth it. You know the people that allowed the PC version to ship, the people who removed core features from a long held series (namely challenge maps), you know the people at WB who have a long history of milking the public and doing my highly questionable things.
They said what is in it, they said how much it is worth to them, dont want to pay that, dont, wait a year and then you can do this merry dance all over again.
Most of what makes this dlcs “feature list” other developers offer free of charge. You only have to look at CDPR or blizzards history of patches to see that if they fuck up they’ll do what ever they can to fix it (diablo3 constant patching and updating also free additional content WITH DEDICATED SERVERS. witcher’s enhanced edition & free dlc) So stuff like fixing the quest or bounties\strike improvements\general UI improvements\voice over(LOL) isn’t new content rather its fixing something that is currently broken or that they feel is flawed with the game – IMO we shouldn’t be fitting the bill for that at all.
What they off as new content is actually quite lacking IMO. To my knowledge there is only 10 new story missions with a new planet (ok a ship that is as large as one), one new strike and one new raid. From what i’ve seen most of the mobs are just simple reskins of existing models with a few new abilities. We also get new talent tree’s and of course various new guns. That imo is a far cry from $80 worth of content. I mean they don’t even offer dedicated servers rather it’s all peer to peer to help keep costs down (only know from ps4 nfi on xbone).
If you feel that’s worth the price that is fine everyone is entitled to their opinion. IMO the most i’d pay is $20. If that means i don’t get to play it, no problem.
we arent footing the bill for any of the UI or basic game changes, nor the quest/bounty revamp or the new Nolanbot. They are all coming in the huge patch hitting the same time as the expansion.
A new zone, at least ten missions, their bounties, plus weapon and class quests, plus exotic bounties, three new classes/specialisations. All new armour and weapons to go with all the above. A few new strikes (i thought it was two or three). New raid. To say nothing of all the new multiplayer options. All of which is all replayable with two different classes after you have done it once, or constant replaying with your main. (yeah shame there is no new race as such)
yes its a personal thing, but I know for a fact that is a hell of a lot of stuff for a $70 (the price for dlc only), hell people pay $100 EVERY YEAR for a Call of Duty reskin with no replayablity.
I don’t play cod or the map packs. Grew up with quake – maps should be free, if they’re not all they do is fracture the community.
Look i’ll agree to disagree. You’re comparing it to cod. I think cod is a rip off as well. I just flat out disagree that 10 story missions, a strike a raid, class specs and new gear is worth the price of a new game.
The only problem with willingly paying $70 for a DLC is that the next one will be $100…
Reasonable changes, I suppose. I just wish they’d implement matchmaking across the board. though…
Would love matchmaking on all multiplayer, there’s a large chunk of the game that I am yet to access.
Yeah they need mm as optional at least…add me if on PS4 if not looking for anything too serious
I used to think that too, but destinylfg makes it easy to find a group and i find i never end up with a bad group as its people going out of thier way to raid or do night falls.
With even match made heroics i feel half the time im stuck with people that are undergeared or people that literally hide and make us 2 man it
Never been able to do a Nightfall as my dude is only lvl31. Seems any time i get close to it they bump up the lvl..
Levels will just become xp with TTK, but you could just buy vanguard gear to get to 32…
hmm I kind of liked getting kicked to orbit trying to solo a nightfall. It really amped up the risk and reward